Archive for February, 2013

In my search for Open Source GIS programs, I stumbled across something called OSGeo Live, which was considered a geospatial package tool, mentioned in a website. Not ever hearing about anything like this before, I decided to research what it is since I am always looking for new geospatial tools and softwares to experiment with for GIS purposes. After searching through the web, I came across OSGeo Live’s website (http://live.osgeo.org/en/index.html). It seemed fascinating that I could use a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything (A list installed softwares can be found at http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/overview.html). So I thought to myself, “Let’s give it a try!”

Once I downloaded the application and extracted it (which is about 2.7GB) it had a file extension I never heard of before <*.7z> and that my computer did not recognize. This ended up needing to be open in a WinZip like application called 7zip. Once I unzipped this file download, another file extension popped up that my computer did not recognize, nor did I recognize it: <*.vmdk> – So again, I was on a search to figure out this file extension since I was walking into a new world of applications, softwares, file extensions, that I have never dealt with before. After this research, I came across what it was – VMware Virtual Disk File. In order to open this I needed a Virtual Desktop. I searched in Google’s search engine “what is the best virtual machine application” and I came across a website that listed VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/) as the number one choice with a description from http://lifehacker.com/5714966/five-best-virtual-machine-applications as follows:

“VirtualBox has a loyal following thanks to a combination of a free-as-in-beer price tag, cross-platform support, and a huge number of features that make running and maintaining virtual machines a breeze. Virtual machine descriptions and parameters are stored entirely in plain-text XML files for easy portability and easy folder sharing. Its “Guest Additions” feature, available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris virtual machines, makes VirtualBox user friendly, allowing you to install software on the virtual machine that grants extra privileges to the host machine for tasks like sharing files, sharing drives and peripherals, and more.”

Then follows the steps to get it started: http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/virtualization_quickstart.html

Once inside of the virtual machine for OS Geo Live, perform the following functions before getting started in any of the programs:

“VMware for desktop users comes in two primary flavors: VMware Player and VMware Workstation. VMware Player is a free solution aimed at casual users who need to create and run virtual machines but don’t need advanced enterprise-level solutions. VMware Workstation includes all the features of VMWare Player—easy virtual machine creation, hardware optimization, driver-less guest OS printing—and adds in the ability to clone machines, take multiple snapshots of the guest OS, and a replay changes made to the guest OS for testing software and recording the results within the virtual machine.”

I also came across another GIS virtual desktop called GISVM (Geographic Information System Virtual Machine) which can be founded at http://gisvm.com/- I will give this a try at a latter date and then compare the two GIS virtual desktops.